Many agencies and companies who were used to in-person research, had to transition to remote user research over the last couple of months. However, the seeming lack of control over the user’s environment, their devices and any technical issues can make the whole experience quite frustrating. On July 22, 2020, Silicon Garden hosted the We Are Online panel consisting of four international speakers with highly diverse backgrounds and work experiences, discussed the risks and problems and explained the benefits and opportunities of remote user research and testing and why it’s such an essential step for any company that wants to build a healthy customer/user relationship.
We were joined by these four amazing speakers:
Max Scheugl, who has been working as a User Experience Consultant for over 25 years, reminded us that good user testing is important and that even user tests that went badly can teach us something valuable. You can only win.
Sonja Bobrowska works as a Customer Experience Researcher in Team Digital at UNIQA, a company which considers user research to be an essential step in building solid customer relationships.
Clo S., an independent UX designer, UX researcher and conversational designer, discussed how you can use cultural diversity when doing remote user research to your advantage and turn it into a major opportunity for creating a better product.
Evelien Al, who combines design research, content strategy and copywriting to help business owners reach their customers, emphasized that testing from the user’s home doesn’t necessarily only mean restraint or risk for technical issues, but also provides us with other valuable business opportunities and knowledge too.
Doing the user testing remotely means less control over your user’s circumstances, devices and technical resources with plenty of risks for technical issues, but it also provides you and your company with many possibilities as our experts point out:
Get a better idea of what it is that your customers want
Get a better idea of who your possible customers are and how they live
Develop a better customer relationship
Have a more successful end product
Become more aware of different cultures and customs as you get in touch with people from all over the world
Create a more universally accessible end product
Unfortunately, user research is still very much undervalued and underused due to a lack of understanding of the process and a fear of failure. However, do take into account that any user test, no matter how many difficulties there were, will always result in some type of data that you can use and will lead to a better user test the next time. These tests are essential stepping stones on the way to a better product and a more direct customer relationship.
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